Earhart's Final Resting Place Believed Found

[muddyboots]

just when they were getting that cozy feel?

[tom d. friedman]

poor amelia, she sure takes a ribbing on this site!! even jay leno made a joke about her tonight!! he said the flight crew of that northwest airlines flight over shot their destination because the pilot /co-pilot were watching the new amelia movie on their laptops!! ba boom!! all kidding aside.... it baffles me that in all the searches that have been mounted all of these years by countless people, 1 person stands out in my mind who is the most qualified to search for amelia & that is dr. robert ballard of the woodshole oceanographic institute. he found rms titanic, battleship bismarck, & other high profile wrecks. granted these ships are huge but in very deep waters & it seems like searching for amelia's lockheed 10 would be comparable to finding a postage stamp on the ocean floor. but remember, dr. ballard also found the stern of president kennedy's ww 2 pt 109 a real small target & made of wood. dr ballard has the credentials, the financial backing, & all the technology & tools to get the job done. yet, neither him nor woodshole have stepped up to the plate i wonder why!! maybe if he made an attempt or two to find the lockheed people would take amelia's loss more seriously instead of that grandstanding snake oil salesman gillespie who has made a sham out of the quest.

[A2C]

I prefer to choose a controversey, and this isn't one I care much for. It doesn't rank high on my list, but here we go. Anyone got Google Earth? Put Howland Island in the search engine. On the screen, you'll see Howland Island. To the left you'll see a string of islands running roughly north-south-the Gilbert and Marshall Islands-700 miles to the west of Howland. Hold that thought.

In a book written about Amelia, and the people who knew about her flight; the author says she had a "backup plan" to where if the plane got lost, she would automatically turn to a course to hit the "wall" of islands heading north south. Much like flying IFR, when the PIC has to break through clouds, you estimate that you are not near mountains on your map based on airspeed, position, and radio aides etc.

Similar to IFR would be a set of procedures, or your backup plan, where you turn towards a line of islands in order to intercept when you get to your reserve, and don't find your destination after a certain period.

After Amelias last known transmission, she had 5 hours of fuel left as reserve. When she couldn't find Howland after a reasonable amount of time, she would have made that turn towards the string of islands that "you can't miss". Conspiracy theories aside, common sense would indicate that's what she did.

There was one problem, the Japanese occupied those islands. Several reports indicate she was captured by the Japanese. It's quite probable.

[tom d. friedman]

everybody forgets fred noonan her navigator, where does he factor in?? he was 1 of the top navigators in the country with pan am airlines & was well known in aviation circles for his credentials. the fact that he was a boozer is a moot point, if he wasn't damned good he wouldn't have been tapped for the flight by amelia. so here is a guy with her that had the well honed skills of navigation & they are lost, go figure!!

[B-29 Super Fort]

poor amelia, she sure takes a ribbing on this site!! even jay leno made a joke about her tonight!! he said the flight crew of that northwest airlines flight over shot their destination because the pilot /co-pilot were watching the new amelia movie on their laptops!! ba boom!! all kidding aside.... it baffles me that in all the searches that have been mounted all of these years by countless people, 1 person stands out in my mind who is the most qualified to search for amelia & that is dr. robert ballard of the woodshole oceanographic institute. he found rms titanic, battleship bismarck, & other high profile wrecks. granted these ships are huge but in very deep waters & it seems like searching for amelia's lockheed 10 would be comparable to finding a postage stamp on the ocean floor. but remember, dr. ballard also found the stern of president kennedy's ww 2 pt 109 a real small target & made of wood. dr ballard has the credentials, the financial backing, & all the technology & tools to get the job done. yet, neither him nor woodshole have stepped up to the plate i wonder why!! maybe if he made an attempt or two to find the lockheed people would take amelia's loss more seriously instead of that grandstanding snake oil salesman gillespie who has made a sham out of the quest.

But Tom, in the cases of searching for those warships and the Titanic, Ballard had a reasonable search location area to begin with, not the case with AE.

[PJ]

Whatever happened to the French expedition that was using towed sonar? They were combing back and forth with it. Seems like they were to go out on a second search.

I agree Robert Ballard would be the one, but with her not giving an accurate position it would be a huge area to search.


PJ
PV-2 Harpoon "Hot Stuff"
www.amhf.org

[JohnH]

Ballard was supposed to have an Amelia mission using a PBY (with probably his other ship methods as well). This was about 5years ago. No further word was heard about it after I read about it in Warbirds Intl. I always hoped he'd be the guy to do it. My question is would the airplane be findable at those depths and currents at this point in time. Having seen some info recently on how wreckage scatters and disappears in current doesn't give me any hope this will ever be solved. She was very close to Howland- with nothing but water to land in. All these fantasies of her landing on some island seem like total rubbish at this point.

Here is the article about Ballard:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... _n9398801/

[old iron]

One thing to keep in mind is that it is quite likely that the Electra in not intact. Earhart was not as good a pilot as she is given credit for and if she ran out of gas at, say, 2000 feet, she probably did not make a beautiful ditch into the ocean. The Electra was not as sturdily built as military birds. It could well be that the largest piece on the ocean bottom is a tail or wing section. The geology at the ocean bottom there is fairly rugged, with piles of manganese nodules that woud easily dwarf the aircraft remains.

Earhart's plans for arrival at Howland were flawed. She arrived at dawn with the sun straight in her eyes, probably short of her destination due to headwinds. The map location was maybe a dozen kilometers in error, which was far enough in these circumstances. The island was small and likely hard to identify among the scatted shadows of clouds. Noonan could not provide any viual assistance as he was in a compartment behind Earhart rather than in the cockpit. Neither knew morse code and she and Howland may have been trying to talk to one another at the same time. With hindsight, the Howland stopover was the obvious weak link for the planned around the world flight.

[JohnH]

And most importantly: She left behind that damned radio antenna!!!!other than a few words from Putnam- in one scene- the movie totally glosses over this. Went to see it on Sunday and it was kind of underwhelming.

[flyboyj]

There was one problem, the Japanese occupied those islands. Several reports indicate she was captured by the Japanese. It's quite probable.

False - the Japanese never made any advances into those islands in the 1930s. As a matter of fact, the Japanese never occupied any part of those islands, here's the history of them.

http://www.pilotfriend.com/world_facts/ ... owland.htm

The Japanese never had a reason to go that far west until after 1942 when the US were supplying Australia and it's forces from that part of the Pacific. In 1937 the Japanese were interested in the British Colonies in SE Asia, Singapore, Malaya, etc. and was pretty entrenched in China. Here's a map of the Japanese Empire and what it looked like during the war years and the direction they expanded.

http://www.japanfocus.org/data/Japanese_Empire2.png

The closest the Japanese ever came to those islands were their garrisons on Tarawa, 400 mile away and the Japanese didn't occupy the Island until 1943.

In the books "Bloody Shambles" a play by play account is given of what Japan occupied prior to the war and what they eventually conquered.

All this shoots big holes in the conspiracy theories.

Last edited by flyboyj on Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[jet1]

you hit it on the head muddy buddy!!! what a coinkadink that the latest revelation would come at the same time as the new amelia flick. i believe gillespie is the "elmer gantry" of aviation history & he's a shameless opportunist. as to the tighar members i believe their intentions are good in the name of aviation history but they have been sweet talked by romance & pie in the sky.

[A2C]

False - the Japanese never made any advances into those islands in the 1930s. As a matter of fact, the Japanese never occupied any part of those islands, here's the history of them.

http://www.pilotfriend.com/world_facts/ ... owland.htm

The Japanese never had a reason to go that far west until after 1942 when the US were supplying Australia and it's forces from that part of the Pacific. In 1937 the Japanese were interested in the British Colonies in SE Asia, Singapore, Malaya, etc. and was pretty entrenched in China. Here's a map of the Japanese Empire and what it looked like during the war years and the direction they expanded.

http://www.japanfocus.org/data/Japanese_Empire2.png

The closest the Japanese ever came to those islands were their garrisons on Tarawa, 400 mile away and the Japanese didn't occupy the Island until 1943.

Well hey there Flyboy, Not much gets past you;

Yes, you are correct the Japanese did not occupy the Gilberts until '43, but Earhart could've found herself north of there in the Marshalls after implementing her backup plan of making the left turn if she and Noonan didn't find Howland. Then she would have been captured.

[muddyboots]

You should join TIGHAR.

[A2C]

You should join TIGHAR.

Amelia, er, I mean Muddy; this story came right out of a biography about Amelia, and it discusses her flight plan in detail.

[flyboyj]

Well hey there Flyboy, Not much gets past you;

Yes, you are correct the Japanese did not occupy the Gilberts until '43, but Earhart could've found herself north of there in the Marshalls after implementing her backup plan of making the left turn if she and Noonan didn't find Howland. Then she would have been captured.

If you look at where the Marshalls are and where Howland Island is located, she would of had to been off course the minute she was airborne and would have had to have flown almost directly there. The Japanese did have a large garrison on Enewetak but that island was quite a distance from any part of her planned flight.

Taking off from Lae, their last known position was Nukumanu which is south east of Tarawa and directly west of Howland, so they were on course. When approaching Howland the USS Itasca did receive strong radio transmissions from Earhart which proved they were in that part of the Pacific and very close to Howland. In Earhart's last transmission she did say she was running "north and south." If that was the case and she went north, based on her fuel should would have been 500 miles east of the Marshalls and about 800 miles away from any Japanese when she ran out of fuel.

Let's assume though she did crash close to Enewetak. There would be no reason for the Japanese to secretly capture her. Although the Japanese invaded China that year and it was condemned by Roosevelt, we still had diplomatic channels opened with Japan. We were still trading with them and for the most part relations were cordial. They knew who Earhart was and it would have been in their best interest to return her. It wasn't until 1940 when relations with Japan really soured.

There's a conspiracy theory about her spying on the Japanese and trying to get their "Purple" code. My wife's grandfather was a cryptographer on MacArthur's staff at the start of the war and he confirmed several times that none of the military Japanese codes were broken until after Pearl Harbor.

Again a "would of, could of" but the evidence is there to show that Earhart was no where near any Japanese when she went missing.